Status effects are beneficial or harmful conditions that affect your Guardians or opponents in battle. These effects are triggered by core abilities, special abilities, signature abilities, and talents. These effects result in a variety of buffs or debuffs, many of which can stack.
Buffs and debuffs display around Guardians' and opponents’ health bars depending on what kind of effects they cause. These will appear at different times over the course of the encounter.
Floating Combat, Armor, and Healing Text
When battling against opponents, you can see floating text that indicates healing received, damage done to shields, the amount you receive from applying a shield, and damage done during an encounter. The text has a different color for each action taken:
- White combat text is used to display normal attack damage.
- Yellow combat text is used to display special attack damage.
- Orange combat text is used to display critical damage.
- Green healing text appears with a + symbol and is used to display healing received.
- Blue armor text is used to display damage done to armor, and blue armor text with a + symbol shows the boost you receive for applying an armor buff.
- Red combat text is used to display damage over time.
- Purple combat text is used to display critical special damage on armor.
Abilities can cause status effects that display text on the screen. Some of these abilities are specific to certain Guardians:
- ATTACK indicates that a Guardian applied an attack buff.
- BURN indicates that a Guardian applied a damage debuff, causing damage over time.
- FREEZE indicates that a Guardian applied a damage debuff, causing damage over time.
- IMMUNE indicates that a Guardian is immune to an ability and will not be affected by it.
- SHOCK indicates that a Guardian applied a damage debuff, causing damage over time.
- WOUND indicates that a Guardian applied a damage debuff, causing damage over time.
- CRIT CHANCE indicates that a Guardian applied a focus buff, raising their chance to deal a critical hit when attacking.
- FOCUS indicates that a Guardian applied a focus buff, raising their critical chance and critical damage.
- FROSTBITE indicates that Elsa applied a debuff that causes inflicted opponents to take additional damage from North Wind.
- ROOT indicates that a Guardian applied a debuff that prevents the opponent from moving or dashing for a duration.
- STUN indicates that a Guardian applied a debuff that prevents the opponent from taking action for a duration.
- PURGE indicates that a Guardian removed beneficial effects from an opponent.
- ARMOR FIELD indicates that Baymax has used a defense buff that applies armor to themselves and their allies for a duration.
- DEFENSE indicates that a Guardian applied a defense buff.
- INDESTRUCTIBLE indicates that a Guardian applied a defense buff that makes incoming damage equal to 0, which prevents them from losing health when being attacked.
- LURE indicates that a Guardian is causing their opponents to concentrate on attacking them.
Status-Effect Terminology
Stack: An effect may have the ability to add onto itself or "stack." This causes the effect to multiply, granting an even greater buff or debuff.
There can be limits on how many times abilities' effects can stack. So, for example, Anger's signature ability Inferno of Justice can cause his basic attacks to have a chance to grant, at maximum, one stack of Burn that deals 20% damage per second to an opponent when he gains eight attack buffs. However, he can still apply burns from other abilities, like with his core ability Escalating Rage, which causes him to deal a 10% damage per second burn to all enemies if he reaches four or eight attack buffs.
Additionally, maximum stack limits on skills and abilities apply only to a specific Guardian. This limit will not impact another Guardian's ability to burn opponents in an encounter. So, imagine if Anger was fighting alongside Hades. Hades' core ability Flames of Tartarus allows him to inflict a burn when he has a critical hit. In this example, both Hades and Anger could simultaneously apply burns to the same opponent.
Buff: This describes a generally positive effect placed on a Guardian. For example, Guardians can receive a focus buff that increases the Focus attribute or another buff that applies a healing effect over time. Belle’s core ability Enchanting Defense is an example of a buff that grants all party members a 10% defense buff for the duration of the encounter.
Debuff: This describes a generally negative effect. Debuffs may reduce Guardians’ attributes, block them from receiving healing, or cause a Stun to cease any and all actions for that Guardian. For example, Oogie Boogie’s talent Black Widow Charm causes targets to be attack blocked for a period of time, keeping them from gaining any attack buffs for the duration.
Active: This describes an effect that is currently affecting a Guardian. Active effects have a start and end time. For example, Sulley’s special ability Sulley Slam has a 50% chance to stun all enemies that are hit for three seconds. Stun applies a debuff that is active during that time.
Passive: An effect is considered passive if it affects a Guardian without its activation needing to be triggered. For example, Ariel’s talent Vital Tide grants her health at the start of an encounter. This effect remains on Ariel until you remove her talent and does not require any conditions for its activation.
Block: A block effect means a Guardian cannot be affected by certain types of status effects and may be unable to assist their allies. For example, Scar's special ability Long Live the King inflicts a heal block for as long as the target has a wound. This means the opponent is unable to receive healing effects nor can they heal their allies as long as it has a wound.
Viewing Buffs & Debuffs During Combat
Tapping the pause icon in the top center of the combat screen during any encounter will allow you to learn more about which status effects are currently in play. This feature will pause the game and can be toggled on and off.
Tap on any Guardian or opponent to inspect them and learn to view more information about their active buffs, debuffs, core ability, special ability, and signature ability.